gdp's Comments

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Stone Sky': Syl Anagist - One

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 17:48:52 +0000

Aye, there's the rub.... can you end a system built on exploitation without ending everything? Asking for a friend civilization. The tuners are going to try, evidently. And evidently they succeeded in taking down Syl Anagist in all its glory. The Stillness, all these thousands of years later, is still mostly preoccupied with bare survival, although a few people in a few places now and then get to have a little more than the minimum. But everything they have still depends on treating people as tools. most explicity in the case of the orogenes, of course, but even the "human" use-castes are taught to know their place and their function. And all these thousands of years later, children are still being sent to the briar patch. The Stillness has forgotten everything else, but it hasn't forgotten how to do that. There are 256 nodes of Syl Anagist. Of cpurse there are: the whole world is as single byte to the Plutonic Engine.

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Stone Sky': Chapter 10

Wed, 28 Oct 2020 19:51:36 +0000

"Vehimal" -- huh. An animal that is a vehicle, a vehicle that is an animal-- who's responsible for its stable and food and such? Did it get lonely, all these thousands of years in the dark? Its voice is "female, polite, detached, and somehow reassuring." Just like all the "Voice of the Metro" ladies who tell you to stand back while the doors are closing. Some things never change. It troubles Nassun that the vehimal has no face to look at. And that reminded me of that line in Harry Potter and an otherwise dissismilar situation: "Haven't we taught you not to trust anything that can speak for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain?" It sounds like a wonderful idea, to be able to get to the other side of the world in a few hours. But there's always a price to be paid. Schaffa's paying now; what's going to be asked of Nassun? and who paid, originally, back in Syl Anagist?

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Stone Sky': Chapter 10

Wed, 28 Oct 2020 19:42:18 +0000

Tools are tools. resources are resources... and doesn't that mindset sound familiar? Without going all "Gaia" about Mother Earth-- treating living ecosystems as resources to be exploited but not cared for, well, it probably isn't going to end well.

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Stone Sky': Chapter 8

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 13:41:54 +0000

I had to keep reminding myself of the sheer scale of this place. I'm used to thinking that "underground" means "small, enclosed space," or at best, the dwarf halls of the King under the Mountain. But this is L. A. or Chicago or something, entirely roofed over and forgotten. (I believe that Jemisin has said that the Stillness was meant to be an imaginary world and NOT some future Earth, but I don't care: Syl Anagist will always be Los Angeles to me.) I wonder what an Innovator-archeologist from the Seventh University would have made of this. Countless people, crumbled away... when the poet told us that "golden lads and girls all must / As chimney-sweepers, come to dust," somehow I don't think that this was what he had in mind. Steel continues to be creepy and manipulative. Those not-dead vines are creepy and worrying. "It's petrifying!" exclaims Nassun, and we agree: it's all turning to stone, and it's also all frightening. The arrangement of its substance is almost crystalline, in fact, cells lined up in neat little matrices, which she's never seen in a living thing before. --- But we have! We've seen the price of magic on living things, and we begin to really wonder about Syl Anagist. "One person's normal is another person's Shattering," as we keep seeing deomnstrated over and over again. You know what's really creepy, though? It's that living train-car. Cool, undeniably, but would you want to just walk in and sit down?

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Stone Sky': Syl Anagist - Three

Fri, 16 Oct 2020 18:35:56 +0000

"Syl Anagist: Five." "Four." "Three." uh-oh. What happens when we get down to zero? I'd forgotten, if I'd even noticed the first time, that "Syl Anagist" isn't just a single city. It's apparently the whole network of cities, each adapted to its environment like a jewel to its setting. All, apparently, through the power of renewable energy and the mere force of life. No cutting down the forests and poisoning the rivers and polluting the air-- ancient times were horrible, weren't they? But everything is alive and well in Syl Anagist! But we're all genre-savvy enough to distrust this apparent Utopia; we know it can't be as simple as it looks. A city which treats even a handful of tuners as tools rather than people, may be hiding other secrets. Other compromises between ideals and perceived necessities. Life is sacred in Syl Anagist, but sometimes death is necessary. Uh huh. I've heard that before. ("Syl Anagist" -- the more I say it, the more it sounds like "Los Angeles." It's got the same rhythm. Los Angeles-- lotusland, la-la-land, shaky town(!). City of Angels. Are you a lucky little lady in the City of Light? Or just another lost angel? City of Night... Probably it's just me.) As for art, no there's not much of it in the post-Shattering Stillness. There are the pop lorists and their oral storytelling, there's party songs and lullabies, there must be statues, Yumenes before the Rifting is described as having a certain amount of frivolous architectural embellishment. But most people, most of the time, are preoccupied with bare survival. Life is hard, even during the ordinary seasons of the Stillness. Wasn't it Alabaster who says, "Once, we were so much more." (And quit dissing railings. Railings may not be a perfect guarantee of safety, but at least they're there when you need something to clutch in a death grip as you creep very very carefully around the balcony or down the stairs or across the bridge. Railings are our friends.).

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Stone Sky': Chapter 6

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 15:27:55 +0000

Yes, this is really uncomfortable, isn't it? We'd like to be happy that Schaffa and Nassun are finding comfort in eahc other, that Nassun (still a child) has someone to take care of her, that Schaffa has someone he can care for without abusing, that redemption is possible. But that's really not what's happening here. The very first time that Nassun met Schaffa, he took silver from her without her consent. The fact that she's consenting now, even offering, doesn't make it better. He's still taking, and she still thinks it's her responsibility to give. It's heartbreaking that Nassun thinks that she's the one that needs redemption. "Determined to be a better daughter," indeed. And (maybe I've read too much old-fashioned children's fiction) what are the traits of a "better daughter"? Compliance, obedience, submission. Putting Father first, always. Everything will be better, until the end. Eeep. So the kind of volcano that's a caldera within a caldera is called a sommian. You learn something new every day. (Declining to comment on the name of this particular sommian.) The "deadciv" gate is a round slab of perfectly white material that is neither metal nor stone Stone erodes, metal rusts, but PVC is forever.

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Stone Sky': Syl Anagist - Four

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 15:18:01 +0000

"I still can’t get over how creepy the word “decanted” is in this context." Reminds me of a conversation in one of Lois McMaster Bujold's "Vorkosigan" books-- one of hte few authors to engage in the implications of technologically-assisted reproduction. Clone designed and brought up by psychopathic terrorists: "I don't know what you'd call it when I was taken out of the uterine replicator." Woman from society where the replicators are common: "Well, when I was taken out of my uterine replicator, my parents called it my birthday." ... creepy is as creepy does; it's not the tech, it's what you do with it. The wire chairs, on the other hand, will never not be creepy. If Nassun can only get out of the system by not existing, she's prepared to make the whole thing stop existing right along with her.

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Stone Sky': Syl Anagist - Four

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 15:07:50 +0000

Another name for the most common type of moonstone is "hecatolite," after the goddess Hecate, a deity associated with magic, witchcraft, women, ghosts and the moon. So perhaps that name, or the Stillness equivalent, persisted when the moon and the goddess were both forgotten, and the word becaume just a collection of syllables. For that matter, I suppose the word "moonstone" itself could have become just a sound rather than a reference.

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Stone Sky': Chapter 4

Wed, 7 Oct 2020 19:26:23 +0000

Oh, and congratulations to N.K. Jemisin on being awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

the foundation highlighted Jemisin’s achievements, saying that her works immerse readers “in intricately imagined worlds and gripping narratives while exploring deeply human questions about racism, environmental crises, and familial relationships. Her novels push against conventions of science fiction and she is expanding the spectrum of participants in the creation of speculative fiction.”

https://www.tor.com/2020/10/06/n-k-jemisin-has-be...

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Stone Sky': Chapter 4

Wed, 7 Oct 2020 19:20:07 +0000

Schaffa remembers the Moon?! I don't think I'd realized just how old he had to be. "a mother oppressed by the fulcrum" -- it's true, she was. And yet, the Fulcrum itself was a product of the fear and hatred shown toward orogenes, an acquiesence to a "police yourselves or we'll police you worse" ultimatum. The Stills fear and hate the orogenes, but need their labor to maintain their system. Again, not really subtle. And so that's the end of the Found Moon/Jekity partnership, and the end of Found Moon itself. Another try at coexistence ends in tears, literally. Poor children, who won't get to be children much longer, and poor Nassun. But apparently Found Moon has fulfilled its purpose when it found Nassun. And Steel is ready to help her get where she needs to go. She's got a ticket to ride, it seems, even though she has nothing to barter for it. "Fortunately, there are other ways to pay."... like that's not ominous at all. Do we trust Steel? Not one bit. She cannot have both Shaffa alive and the world's hatred dead.. And like that's not chilling at all. You can't leave love alive without allowing the possibility of its opposite. Not even a twisted codependent trauma-poisoned love like Shaffa's. "It isn't right that there's no end to it." No, it isn't right. "well now I'm crying." You and me both.

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Stone Sky' - Syl Anagist: Five

Sat, 26 Sep 2020 14:59:29 +0000

"Obelisk Gate" is certainly more poetic, but "Plutonic Engine" has its own gloomy grandeur, too. "IT'S ALL A METAPHOR FOR SLAVERY." I don't think this trilogy is intended to be particularly subtle. Angry, but not subtle. So we've got a grand, ambitious enterprise, inextricably linked with treating people like possessions. What could possibly go wrong?

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Obelisk Gate': Interlude / Chapter 19

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 23:36:05 +0000

@Mark-- since I don't have twitter, and can't tweet at you, allow me to wish you a Happy Book Birthday here. I know, from what you've said, that this new book is very dear to your heart. Congratulations on what looks like a very successful launch. Can't wait to read it. But... I Am Not Prepared!

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Obelisk Gate': Interlude / Chapter 19

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 23:33:18 +0000

As Yeats famously says, Too long a suffering makes a stone of the heart. It's no wonder that Essun, tied into the Obelisk Gate, turns some of that stone-making outward. "This is the first time you've ever seen a stone-eater made of alabaster." Typical of Alabaster: he's always doing what no one has done before him. One last bit of pointed commentary on the world that made him, not just a heart of stone, but stony through and through.

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Obelisk Gate': Chapter 18

Sat, 12 Sep 2020 17:42:53 +0000

"No voting on who gets to be people.'" Such a simple principle, so rarely followed. ( I had one of those conversations on line, recently: someone complained that the "1619 Projecvt" was bad history, because of course the United States hadn't been founded on slavery and racism. I mentioned the "3/5ths" compromise, which embeds differential treatment for enslaved persons and free persons, right there in the founding document. Him: it was a Compromise, the young Union wouldn't have held together without it! Me and others: so you're saying we wouldn't have had a country without race-based slavery; how is that different from saying that race-based slavery is a founding principle of the country? Unpleasant as it is to admit. our Founding Fathers were voting on who gets to be people.) (ETA: I have not read/seen the 1619 project materials and have no opinion of the quality of the scholarship. It just annoys me that people are so unwilling to even consider anything more complicated than "brave patriots fighting for freedom." Unpleasant as it is to think about just whose freedom they were willing to ignore.) "Not one more child." ... in a pessimistic mood, I'm beginning to wonder whether that will ever be true, without icing the whole damn human race. I'd settle for "mostly true," but even that seems to be a frail and fragile hope.

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Obelisk Gate': Chapter 16

Mon, 7 Sep 2020 18:54:25 +0000

"Human." "Not anymore." "Should I take your word for that? Or listen to what I feel myself to be?" Always the question, isn't it. Who gets to be human. Who gets to decide for themselves. Who gets to decide for other people. "You ate her." "I've eaten many." ... Okay then. Kinda human, at that. One stone eater eats another, one comm eats another, that's people for you. It's also very human that the stone-eaters aren't, so to speak, a monolith (pun intended!). They disagree with each other just like humans do, just like the members of Castrima are doing right now. So Essun is allied with a Hoa and his faction, who want to keep the human race alive. Essun has few hopes left about the human race or her place within it, but the idea of a world inhabited only by stone-eaters is terrible to her. Nassun, on the other side of the continent, has just allied herself with Hoa's enemy, the gray stone-eater, the one who wants humans gone. Nassun has narrowed the list of people she cares about down to one, and she'd see the world lost to spare him pain. This can't end well.

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Obelisk Gate': Interlude / Chapter 14

Wed, 2 Sep 2020 19:15:18 +0000

It's severed limbs two chapters in a row. Enough is enough, right?

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Obelisk Gate': Chapter 13

Mon, 31 Aug 2020 23:42:35 +0000

Oh, Tonkee. She would probably be difficult to live with in real life, but that single-mindedness of hers is a lot of fun to read about. Well, it's all fun until the arm-cutting-off bit, anyway. I am really not a visually-minded person. I have no trouble with Castrima, and its mini-Fulcrum-chamber, as a piece of world-buildingl But I'm having a lot of trouble imagining what it all looks like. But, giant rusting underground geodes! If you've gotta hide, that must be an interesting place to hide in.

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Obelisk Gate': Chapter 11

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 12:49:16 +0000

Yes, the YW planets did have humanoid versions with which mere humans could converse. (Pluto was my favorite.) I can see how that makes a difference.

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Obelisk Gate': Chapter 11

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 12:47:34 +0000

Haven't read -- seen? -- those. But since one thing leads to another, the bit about the giant nervous system reminded me of Ursula K. LeGuin's "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow," with its sentient world-forest.

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'The Obelisk Gate': Chapter 11

Wed, 26 Aug 2020 21:28:29 +0000

Original purposes can be repurposed easily -- it's the deadciv tech, whatever those iron chairs were supposed to be used for, they've been repurposed into surgical devices used to torture and mutilate children. And it's also the sessapinae-- their natural (or genetically altered?) purpose is to sense and control the motion of the earth (or whatever else can be done with their peculiar brand of magic). Warrant repurposes them to sense and control other people using orogeny. And it's the children themselves -- their original "purpose" or at least potential is to grow up as orogenes. Warrant repurposes them into a force with which to control orogenes. As children, their natural "purpose" is to grow up with their family or clan or comm. Warrant and the Fulcrum both repurpose children, citizens, human beings, into tools. And the whole system -- orogenes, nodes, Fulcrum, Guardians, Warrant -- is apparently the frontline army in an eternal war between humanity and Father Earth. I don't think that the purpose of any species is constant conflict with the world which produced it. "Those in power want to control breeding" -- they probably do. The primary social structure is referred to as the "use-caste" -- notice the caste part of that. One of the features of a caste system, as opposed to a class hierarchy, is that you're born into your caste and you can't achieve your way out of it. If you're born poor, you may achieve wealth; if you're born to uneducated parents, you may achieve education. But caste is assigned depending on who your parents were, and there's nothing you can do to change that. But if that system is going to work, that is, if caste boundaries are going to be maintained, there have to be rules about who can marry who, who can have children together, who can pass along inheritances or alliances to which children. I don't think that Stillness use-castes are completely rigid-- but from what we've seen, changing your caste means leaving your comm and your family. In the case of orogene children, whether they end up orogenes or Guardians, they're going to be forcibly removed from their families. You can't have a caste of orogenes itf you leave them integrated into their original relationships. I'd forgotten that the Eitz we met in Nassun's last chapter was the kid whose family Schaffa murdered. Oh dear.